Assignment: Fix This Lesson Plan
Lesson planning is one of the areas of teaching in which both the art and science of the profession takes shape. It is an opportunity to apply theoretical frameworks and empirically-supported instructional strategies, organize the presentation of content knowledge, and implement valid assessment strategies. It is also a place to plan how to model the behaviors that undergird the psychology profession, to creatively translate subject content into instruction, and design materials and activities that promote a thriving classroom environment that promotes student engagement and learning. Ask 100 instructors to design an introductory lesson on memory, for instance, and you will get 100 different lesson plans implementing many different strategies and approaches.
This week, you will do some advanced lesson planning. You may already have had some experience planning lessons in prior coursework. If this is your first experience, that’s okay. Your Instructor will assign one of the four Lesson Plans from this week’s Learning Resources for you to use for this Assignment. Your task will be to revise this lesson plan to incorporate effective teaching methods, align with your teaching style/approach, and be tailored to the type of student you are interested in teaching. Each of the flawed lesson plans covers a different chapter of the Griggs textbook. The one you revise, this week, will be the one you will use several times in the remainder of the term.
Note that the lesson plan you are to fix is an entire chapter, although you can decide which components of the chapter need to be covered in class and which students can learn on their own. Typically, each chapter in a textbook gets covered in a week’s time. This approach gives the instructor freedom to divide up the work, use different approaches in different weeks, or in other ways organize the lessons.
Your lesson plan should apply pedagogical principles, consider the audience, and fit within a week with three class meetings of 75-minutes of class time each. How will you ensure students learn and retain? How will you make sure they are attentive and engaged? Use your creativity, feel free to get ideas from the various websites in the Learning Resources or that you find on your own.
Remember that creating a lesson plan takes time. You bring in a lot of ideas, build parts of the lesson, put them together, see if they fit, try another way, and eventually you have a great lesson to present. You are not given a template (like you were for Teaching of Psychology) because we want you to take ownership of the process and re-design a plan that fits your style and allows you the freedom to do what you want. Take your time, do it right, and enjoy the challenge.
To Prepare:
Complete all assigned Learning Resources, reflecting on the methodologies and approaches to teaching presented.
Return to Week 2, and review your reflections and conclusions about your personal instructional style.
You are given a lesson plan that is lacking in many ways. Review your assigned lesson plan and begin to identify areas for improvement.
Consider how the lesson plan aligns with your instructional style as written.
The Assignment By Day 5
Address the areas for improvement you identified within the lesson plan according to best practices you learned this week, and also adapt it to fit your style. You are free to redesign, reorganize, change plans, approaches, etc. You may also choose to start from scratch. Note, however, that if you choose this option, you must keep the same lesson topic and use the Griggs text as a resource for your lesson.
At the bottom of the document, provide an explanation (no more than 1 page) of why you made the adjustments you did (or why you rejected the existing plan and started anew) and how you believe the revised/new plan will improve student outcomes for the lesson. Make references to the readings in your explanation.
I will send you a pictures of chapter 8 my assigned chapter.
